Trivia for Sunday Driver.
Rockstar Games directed this film because of the 1999s Presidential Politics Scandal, the murder of John F. Kennedy, the Watergate scandal and the up-and-down economic cyphers. Paul Newman was 75 years old when he portrayed Owen Travis in this film and said that from all of the last movies he acted in in his last 8 years before his death (Newman died in 2008) this was the only film that really had a meaning and a symbol behind it. The film was extremely controversial because of the economic, political content and the government called the movie an indictment against them saying it was their fault that everything like this was going on. Also the accusation of Owen Travis against the Presidential Staff-leaders of corruption was called a shame. Also President Bush watched this movie but said that the film is indeed accurate for the most part but said that he likes to know which part the film is accusing of: the government or the world. Rockstar Games reacted that the film does not shove the fault to anyone, but that Owen Travis does because he clearly has mental problems but does know what is happening to the world. Ray Liotta dyed his hair grey in order to have a more presidential look. The film premiered on the Cannes Film Festival in its full five hours long length which caused controversy. The film was originally 5 hours long. This was not only too long for a film, but also it had too much extreme accusations such as a scene of Travis screaming in the mirror as he yells "Bush! Fuck you! You disgrace me! You kill the world, you already have!" but also a scene were we see Travis manipulating a government agent and threatening to give him a chelsea grin with a bank pass saying "your cheeks are my fucking earth boll, you corrupt spank!". There was also a scene of Travis planning an assassination attempt on Bush using a sniper rifle, but all of these scenes were cut out (including more) because of the extreme tone of the film to its reality. Rockstar Games is currently working on re-editing the film back to its five hour length, planning to have it premiering on the Cannes Film Festival 2013. Paul Newman described his character as "clearly mentally unstable, but he is a man who suffering from the world's problems because he is a simple man. He is not rich, he is just a normal citizen and he has seen things that nobody wants to see." In order to get into his character, Paul Newman visited New York and stayed in a lonely sleazy motel room in order to feel the loneliness of his character and the emptiness. He also didn't contact any of his relatives for two months. Jennifer Lawrence's first role in a full length feature film. She previously only appeared in television series. The taxi that Paul Newman was driving in was actually a real NYC taxi which was used for the scenes. There was originally a car transformed to a cap in, but Newman refused to use it saying he wanted a real taxi car and he actually paid the New York Taxi-Service for the use of a real taxi during filming. Rockstar Games wanted Paul Newman to choose an actor who would portray the younger Owen Travis in flashbacks. Newman choose Tom Cruise, with whom he had collaborated before in the 1986s film The Color Of Money. Most parts of the film take place in the center of New York City, but there were no signals for traffic of warnings that they were. This caused that everything had to be filmed without people knowing it. Two days before the start of filming, Paul Newman was doing a walk through Central Park and he stayed in the center of NY in order to express a realistic tone to the insomniac he had to portray. The morning that filming started, Newman hadn't slept for two days but continued to act. There is a scene were we see Travis looking from the taxi cab to a group of school kids companied by their mother. The children are actually Paul Newman's grandchildren and the mother of them is actually Newman's daughter. The scene were Travis is sitting in his taxi parked to the highway and a man is screaming "Taxi! Can you take me to..." and Travis drives off was actually real and improvised. The man who said "Taxi! Can you take me to..." was a real NY citizen who thought the taxi that Newman was driving was a real taxi. In order to portray the corruptness of his character, Newman decided to drive off. Rockstar Games liked the improvisation scene and decided to keep it in the film. This marks the longest full length feature film directed by Rockstar Games.